Carmelite Retreat Centre – The elusive precence of God

As part of our final year studies our class were sent on a retreat, that is where I currently am – somewhere in Benoni! Although sceptical (like most of my class mates) I have come to terms that this is how my life will be until Wednesday and I will need to make peace with that.

The themes we are using as reflection is Luke 24 the story of two disciples on their way back from Jerusalem to Emaus, secondly: our own life story and lastly the movie “Motorcycle diaries” – a story about two Argintinian friends traveling through America.

Reflectioon and putting your life on a standstill is something that doesn’t come easily, and I’m finding it very difficult, therefore I’ll be using my blog as method for meditation and reflection.

Vuzi (one of the students from the URC) and I was talking earlier about how it could be that two of the Lord’s followers (diciples) wouldn’t recognise Him, an element in our lives which I find very relevant – how we sometimes live our lives (even ministers) without experiencing God’s precence, how caught-up we sometimes get in doing stuff, even church stuff, and forgetting the One who we are doing it for. It is however good to later realise that God’s precence really hasn’t left us. We won’t see Him though if our eyes aren’t open. Not seeing something doesn’t prove that it does not exist.

Many a time when I look back on things that have happened, I see the fingerprints of God on the situation, I don’t neccesarily feel That precence at the time when things are happening, but looking back I can see the words of Rom 8:28 coming alive in my life. A God working in such miraculous and misterious ways that one can’t help looking back in awe an wonder. But once again it must be said that it is a kind of “life happening while other plans are made” type of situation. That I have come to live in a relationship with God in a very cognitive way, that I find God in the poetry of the Psalms, the sintax of Paul, between the pages of commentaries – but also in music, in movies, in my emotions.

The two companions (whether in the Bible or the movie) are you and me and how we sometimes get disappointed when we can’t find God where we want to look for Him. Only for us to have to realise how narrowminded our insight was for thinking of God in human terms (are there any other ways?)

In the movie and in our own life we find God in the smiles of the people surrounding us, the act of mercy we hand out (or sometimes are on the receiving end of), the moments of desperation and fear.

However our actions, words and intellect will never be able to capture the full extent of God’s precence, but sometimes we will see the fingerprints left behind by the One whose existance is truely to big to grasp.